The information comes from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Brazil, which released, this Tuesday (26), the Radar IDHM survey
Brazil entered, for the first time, the category of countries with “very high” human development. In 2024, the country reached 0.805 on the Municipal Human Development Index (IDHM), compared to 0.744 in 2012. The scale for classifying human development varies from 0 to 1, being very high: above 0.800.
The information comes from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Brazil, which released, this Tuesday (26), the Radar IDHM survey.
The marker evaluates the parameters of health and longevity, education and income generationaccording to color (black and white) and sex (woman and man). The publication considers the last 13 years – from 2012 to 2024.
When the United Nations program began calculating this index, 30 years ago, Brazil was a country with a low HDI, that is, less than 0.555.
Education
The parameter that most boosted the IDHM in this period was educationgoing from 0.679 in 2012 to 0.798 in 2024.
The coordinator of the UNDP Brazil Human Development Unit, Betina Barbosa, highlighted, in this context, the granting of Bolsa Família.
“It’s the Bolsa Família program that removes a huge number of children from work and gives them access to school and the obligation to also be at school. So, here I directly see the effect of a Brazilian public policy.”
Betina Barbosa recalled that the program, created in 2003, begins to take effect around ten years later, precisely when the first group of beneficiaries completes a satisfactory period of primary and secondary education.
Black families
According to her, the improvement in education indicators during this period is more significant among lower-income familiesespecially black women.
“This is where the black population begins to show better indicators, better performance in education. So, the policy takes a group that was excluded and brings this group into the human development dialogue. This happens from 2016 onwards.”
The expert emphasizes that there is no alternative for improving Brazilian development without including the black population in the public policy agenda. The same goes for women. “These are two serious obstacles for Brazil, race inequality and gender inequality.”
Health and income
The coordinator explained that, of the sub-indices, public health policy is the one that produces the most positive results for the countrywith a “very high development” performance already in 2012 (0.829), due to the consolidation of the Unified Health System (SUS) following the 1988 Constitution. Even so, it is the one with the slowest growth, reaching 0.860 in 2024.
The income parameter grows at a low speed, from 0.732 in 2012, to 0.760 in 2024, at the level of high development.
Metropolitan regions
According to UNDP data, the Metropolitan regions are the places where Brazilians live best and pull up the country’s HDIM.
Some states, mainly in the South and Southeast regions, already have very high HDIbut the Brazilian average is accompanied by metropolitan regions that were previously considered regions on the Brazilian periphery.
As an example, Betina cites Grande Teresina, in Piauí, with very high human development indexes: 0.809.
“These territories that previously dragged Brazil’s average down, because they didn’t keep up with the growth rate, are now units that help the country reach the ‘very high’ average.”
Among the nine states in the Northeast Region, seven metropolitan regions already have very high HDI. “This is something unprecedented in the work we carry out at UNDP.”
See a list of these regions:
Natal – 0822
Aracaju – 0.809
Grande Teresina – 0.809
Recife – 0,806
São Luís – 0.806
Salvador – 0,803
João Pessoa – 0.803
Denial
For the UNDP, in the years 2020 to 2022, the country faced a systemic crisis due to the covid-19 pandemic. In 2021, the country’s HDI reached 0.757. The expert considers that the most worrying thing for Brazil was the denial that this collapse would have negative effects on development.
“This denial and lack of rapid involvement in the creation of public policies that combat systemic crises is very serious,” he explained. “We have not yet recovered here, in terms of life expectancy, from the blow of Covid-19”, he added.
In this regard, infant mortality is the indicator that concerns the UNDP the most. and which is linked to public policies that require a quick response. “And the country did not respond quickly enough to the impacts of Covid-19.”
The IDHM Radar results were calculated based on data from the National Household Sample Survey Continua (Pnad Contínua), from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), in partnership with the technical team and researchers from Fundação João Pinheiro.
